


at last

by Penstills



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 100 Year War (Avatar TV), Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Angst, Character Death, Drabble, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Genocide, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Survivor Guilt, Tragedy, Writing Exercise, depending on how u look at it, the course of a life in a few hundred words, this is sad but the end is kind of not sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26554531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penstills/pseuds/Penstills
Summary: You were scarcely 5 when it occurred. When those troops of red and black descended upon your temple, when you heard the horrid sounds of people dying terrible deaths. You heard the wails of the newborns, silenced, and you heard the screams of your friends, silenced and you heard the crying of your people, silenced.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	at last

**Author's Note:**

> i found this in my notes on my phone, which means i wrote it at 2 am when i was sad. so here. have it. 
> 
> trigger warnings: genocide, death, possible poor editing

When you were young, you couldn’t go a day without thinking of death. You’d awake, in a cold sweat, curled into a ball in whichever hole you could find for the night. You’d cry out, for your friends, for the bison, for your community. And there would be no reply. 

You were alone.

You’re old now. You know you’re nearing your final time. You’ve been blessed with so much of it: 100 years since that awful day, and still you live and breathe. There is no one else left. You must breathe for each one of your friends, of your family, who deserved to live as well.

You were scarcely 5 when it occurred. When those troops of red and black descended upon your temple, when you heard the horrid sounds of people dying terrible deaths. You heard the wails of the newborns, silenced, and you heard the screams of your friends, silenced and you heard the crying of your people, silenced.

When you were a young person, a teenager, you daydreamed of harming those who had killed your chance for a future. You’d spin tornadoes on your fingertips, and your eyes would go hard and flinty, to keep away the tears. You'd had no home. You'd been a traveler, like all your ancestors, but only out of necessity. You had no one. You had no culture. Not anymore.

It’s not that you’re not angry. You are. Even now. You are. You’re the last one left: you must be angry, for everyone who never got the chance to be. You also must live, for everyone who had never gotten the chance. For all of the newborns in the temple. For all of the elders. For everyone. You've lived your whole life bare. Without culture, without tattoos, without anybody. 

You've lived through every wicked trap they'd concocted to kill your kind. You've lived through the death of your brethren. You've lived through being a starving, soaking child curled in the hull of a fishing boat, with a dirty face and torn robes, knowing that if you were caught you'd be killed. You've lived through a lifetime of cruelty, of injustice.

Here you are, elderly, when you catch word of the Avatar’s return. And even older still when you hear of the Fire Nation’s surrender, rippling through the air of your outskirts coastal town. You are 105 when you hear of the little air nomad boy-avatar, who has ended this horrid war. You hobble out onto the porch of your house, and your knees buckle beneath you. You fall.

You clasp your hands together. Tears stream down your face. Your head, free of hair and yet unmarked, marred by wrinkles, by time, raises to the sky. Your body is too hot and too cold and too frail all at once beneath your brown robes. 

You could be a small child again, for all the emotion within you. 

100 years is a long time to be alone in the world. It is a long time for a war to have ravaged the world, to have destroyed all manner of people. 

“At last!” you cry, as the wind around you lifts the sleeves of your garments.

"At last!" 

**Author's Note:**

> honestly rereading this makes me want to do a full series about a really old airbender who survived through all the bullshit and sets out to go meet aang before they die. i think i might just write it.


End file.
